Tramlines, Sheffield

On the quiet, Sheffield has a music heritage to rival London and Manchester, giving rise not only to wry indie rock bands such as Pulp and Arctic Monkeys, but also to a whole subculture of electronic music like Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League. This inexpensive three-day event aims to celebrate the city by turning most of it into a venue. There are acts with local connections (Toddla T), but the real big scores here are from further afield. Chief among these are Dre Skull and Shangaan Electro. A bit like Diplo, Brooklyn producer Skull is re-investigating dancehall rhythms, a project that's winning him fans in hipster circles and also collaborators within the Jamaican scene such as Vybz Kartel. Shangaan Electro, led by scene godfather Nozinja, are a delegation from the hi-speed South African dance craze, and offer not only a 190bpm live performance, but also a dance workshop.

Various venues, Fri to 21 Jul

JR

Devendra Banhart, Manchester & London

After the spectacular run of massive pop singles Rihanna has enjoyed since 2008, she's currently in the unenviable position of being an enormously famous celebrity, but with very few particularly good new songs to keep the whole spectacle afloat. Helpfully, Rihanna recently devised her own metaphor for this: the "777" tour, an airborne promotional folly in which she played seven cities in seven countries over seven days. This now is the "Diamonds" tour which, as you can imagine, is far from a back-to-basics affair. The singer begins the night with a solo performance in front of a projection of erotic statuary, and becomes progressively more sexualised from there. The weird confessionals of her current Unapologetic album must be negotiated, but there will still be consolation to be had from her greatest hits.

Rihanna, On tour

After the spectacular run of massive pop singles Rihanna has enjoyed since 2008, she's currently in the unenviable position of being an enormously famous celebrity, but with very few particularly good new songs to keep the whole spectacle afloat. Helpfully, Rihanna recently devised her own metaphor for this: the "777" tour, an airborne promotional folly in which she played seven cities in seven countries over seven days. This now is the "Diamonds" tour which, as you can imagine, is far from a back-to-basics affair. The singer begins the night with a solo performance in front of a projection of erotic statuary, and becomes progressively more sexualised from there. The weird confessionals of her current Unapologetic album must be negotiated, but there will still be consolation to be had from her greatest hits.

Hermeto Pascoal, London

The 77-year-old multi-instrumentalist and composer, whom even the taciturn Miles Davis once described as "one of the most important musicians on the planet", returns to Britain for a rare nightclub run. Since he's normally capable of rousing concert-hall audiences to singing, the close-up effect in Ronnie Scott's should be electrifying. As well as being a composer of passionate and playful themes, Pascoal is a mesmerising Latin-jazz improviser on flutes, sax, accordion and keyboards; though at least as much of his improv output comes from beating percussion on his body, blowing into teapots or jugs of water, or jabbering in an animated fusion of Portuguese and scatlike gibberish.

Ronnie Scott's, W1, Wed to Fri

JF

Kit Downes Quintet, On tour

The development of Kit Downes has been one of the most absorbing stories in post-millennial UK jazz. Downes had a Mercury prize nomination in 2010 for his trio album, Golden, but this year's Light From Old Stars – for a quintet including reeds-player James Allsopp and cellist Lucy Railton – shows how far Downes's combination of jazz spontaneity, classical structure and musical openness has brought him. As well as evoking the sense of space its title invites, the album pays direct tributes to jazz-piano and vibrant blues.

The Killing Flower, Buxton

Now in his mid-60s, Salvatore Sciarrino has composed 15 music-theatre works. Among them are some of the most remarkable operas of our time, but until now only one has been seen in Britain. Music Theatre Wales is going where none of the bigger British companies have ventured, with the first British production of Sciarrino's best-known stage work, Luci Mie Traditrici, the compelling two-act 1998 chamber opera, which has been renamed The Killing Flower in English translation. At Buxton it's being presented in a double bill with MTW's recent staging of Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs For A Mad King; in the autumn The Killing Flower will embark on a tour of its own.